Class Update - Guardians

[AS1476]

Shield use on the belt. I see two options that fit the class.
Have this give us incoming healing OR mitigations.
Either way I find it appropriate to the LI and the class's function.

I would prefer mitigations, that would boost all mit types.
Every build I have I always put on mitigation essences, with varying amounts of Incoming Healing, Blue has more IH essences then Red, for me, as an example.
Making some of our mits a passive LI thing seems like the way to go.

[Bhorn_EU]

So coins are easy to get for raiders to get plenty of legacy replacement scrolls...

So the guy with only 2 LIs and one being a double hander is more than likely to have never been given a raid slot (unless his raid leader was an EdgeCase disciple), he may have an alt who has the currency ofc. But the fact of his complaint tells me he doesn't yet have this access to imbued legacy replacement scrolls that the raiders have.

Ok raiders have earned their coin but I'd argue the majority of players will not have these accomplishment achieved. Yet, and not being class specific, still be in the same boat in that they ideally have to re-jig their LIs or fall further behind the curve.

Perhaps it's in their minds to require a certain amount of players to need to use the store and so pay for the changes. For me I have 28 imbued LIs over 7 characters and not a lot of coin. I'm sure a few scrolls will be in the update going live but different characters and classes are going to "need" different numbers dependant of the current state of their LIs and specific requirements.

For myself I have future proofed the class changes by making alt build LIs that won't need so much of a re-jig and the resources to make more from scratch if needed. I have kept LIs with up to now duff legacies that, it would seem, are now coming into their own. Other's won't be so OCD about it and be dumped on by SSG's changes.

I'm yet to try the guard on BR, been putting it off as it's likely to effect my game play more than my other classes since HD made the bleeder possible and replaced the fun I once derived from tanking.

Mac

That was me and you pretty much hit the nail on the head. My guard, whilst being one of my longest serving toons, is only number 4 in the gift list, and after checking this morning , just to get his 1h and 2h up I need 40 empowerment crystals. Now, very few kinnies are currently online having exhausted most of the end game on their characters so easy (CoS) farming for crystals is not really an option, for raiding kins with multiple characters all with BiS gear and a lot of free time, big changes don't seem that big, for the average players , (i.e. the majority of the playerbase), big changes mean much more work, and playing computer games shouldn't be work.

[Oelle]

Shield use on the belt. I see two options that fit the class.
Have this give us incoming healing OR mitigations.
Either way I find it appropriate to the LI and the class's function.

I would prefer mitigations, that would boost all mit types.
Every build I have I always put on mitigation essences, with varying amounts of Incoming Healing, Blue has more IH essences then Red, for me, as an example.
Making some of our mits a passive LI thing seems like the way to go.

Guards dont need another source of physical mitigations. Those are already overcapped with good gear, a heavy shield and blueline spec, without any essences. If one doesnt want to use a shield, one shouldnt be mit-capped without actually doing something for it. Obviously rating, not %mitigation that adds up as thats OP as long as everything stacks additive.
tactical mitigation on belt however might be viable. Or incoming healing. Or anything that increases thread/damage, even tactical damage rating wouldnt be that bad, if shieldskills and yellow shouts are meant to be tactical.

[safer666]

Very pleased to see red line Guardian getting a boost, as someone do my semi-annual bounce back into the game I am for the first time in a long while considering picking my classic Guardian up again rather than sticking to Hunters.

I assume red line is still very much a 2hander line though, yes? I don't especially have an issue with that - and I have some nice looking swords anyhow - but every time (in any game) something like this gets change I get that small traitorous flicker of hope for a sword and board dps spec...

[Joedangod]

I assume red line is still very much a 2hander line though, yes? I don't especially have an issue with that - and I have some nice looking swords anyhow - but every time (in any game) something like this gets change I get that small traitorous flicker of hope for a sword and board dps spec...

Two handers for DPS, yes. 1h has notably lower damage on bleed tooltips, I don't recall the exact difference but it was big enough for me to completely abandon the idea of a 1h build and delete the LI after seeing it.

(Wardens do have a sword and board DPS line by the way).

[safer666]

Two handers for DPS, yes. 1h has notably lower damage on bleed tooltips, I don't recall the exact difference but it was big enough for me to completely abandon the idea of a 1h build and delete the LI after seeing it.

(Wardens do have a sword and board DPS line by the way).

They do, and at some point I'm going to make a concerted effort to get my head around it. I love wardens in principle, but they're a little complex for me to fully engage with. I have a few that have gotten to 20, only for me to lose interest once I have to start caring about the 9 mastery buttons.

There never was much hope that a Guardian could DPS with SnB , just a fool's hope as I have been told. Yet I felt it was worth asking, just on the off-chance that smashing orcs in the face with a large sheet of metal suddenly started hurting them as much as the pointy end of things.

[Gandalfy]

Guards dont need another source of physical mitigations. Those are already overcapped with good gear, a heavy shield and blueline spec, without any essences. If one doesnt want to use a shield, one shouldnt be mit-capped without actually doing something for it. Obviously rating, not %mitigation that adds up as thats OP as long as everything stacks additive.
tactical mitigation on belt however might be viable. Or incoming healing. Or anything that increases thread/damage, even tactical damage rating wouldnt be that bad, if shieldskills and yellow shouts are meant to be tactical.

This is spot on. There is no advantage to have more mitigations when you are overcapped already.
More incoming healing or threat generation from the belt are two good purposes possible.
My preference would be to have a legacy for threat generation, with the default belt value that goes up with starlits (currently called "Shield use") becoming an incoming healing multiplier.

[AS1476]

I did say ALL mitigations, not physical only.
No one is tactical mits capped without essences. And running with a 2H your physical mits are not capped either, without essences.
I would rather have a nice chunk of mits on my belt so I can use mastery or crit or any other type of essences to round out my toon.

[Oelle]

I did say ALL mitigations, not physical only.
No one is tactical mits capped without essences. And running with a 2H your physical mits are not capped either, without essences.
I would rather have a nice chunk of mits on my belt so I can use mastery or crit or any other type of essences to round out my toon.

I understood what you wrote. And disagreed. If you dont wear a shield, you shouldnt be physmitcapped without essences. Thats why I wrote, they should NOT add physmits, which means not all types of mits to the belt, if they add mits to the belt.

[Gandalfy]

I agree with SSG that the current bleed system needs to be removed.

I don't believe that most guardian players want bleeds to be the primary mode of damage.
How fun is it to watch your enemy's health bar slowly drop because a tiny box tells you that he's bleeding?

I would much rather do damage Champ style - where most damage is caused by the base damage of the skills.
You could limit guardian's skills to 80% of the damage a champ does.
Even this would be about 8-10X more than what the current guardian skill damage is.
If you removed bleeds at present, guardian DPS would be tiny.
Most skills only generate 1-2k damage if they don't crit (at 50k phys mastery)
Against enemies with 100-170k health, that's almost 100 hits to kill a single enemy.


Also, who would want their only AOE stun (knockdown) removed? And why?
(Hammer down is not an AOE stun)
Every class I can think of has an AOE stun - Champs, hunters, LMs, etc

[Piff]

I know I said before I'd love shield use to become some kind of a small flat damage reduction, but I'm really leaning towards favouring incoming healing, which would actually save me essence slots and probably be easier to balance in the long run.

I'm sore about the changes to brutal charge, and it's hard to defend it when i've seen how ridiculously it can be used, but just having a guaranteed crit I feel is not enough. I'd still rather keep an aoe stun, but preferably limited in that using charge will cause a stun to proc with specific skills, and not others. That way it might be less prone to abuse.

[siipperi]

Yes. Guardian doesnt need mitigations as belt bonus. Anyway I dont think incoming healing is good idea either. Gives far too easily stats for a class that is already extremely strong on all stats related to tanking (maxed mits without slotting essences, maxed crit d without essences, extremely high bpe without essences...). It would basically mean need of slotting incheal essences is gone as well, or at top slotting one.

[Oelle]

Also, who would want their only AOE stun (knockdown) removed? And why?
(Hammer down is not an AOE stun)
Every class I can think of has an AOE stun - Champs, hunters, LMs, etc

Classes that have AoE stuns:
Beorning (if traited Lumber then AoE stun in bear form after use of Lumber, just like Guards worked with charge, else not, just AoE fear in yellow. Though, technically, a Knockdown is not a Stun, which might mean Beornings dont have a stun. But as knockdown usually is nearly the same as stun and has slightly less CCimmunity, I'll call it a stun)
Burglar (3 Targets, 8 Seconds, <20s CD)
Captains (Terrifying Bellow, 4 Targets, 5 Seconds, 15s CD)
Champion (Several: crafted Horn (longest AoE Stun ingame, but consumable), Horn of Gondor (3s, many targets), Trait Athletic (works just like Guards Charge-Stun)
Guardian (Shield-smash, 7 Targets, 3 Seconds, 5s? CD, Charge-Stun that seems to vanish, Cataclysmic shout (not sure here, never used it))
Hunter (Explosion of Decoy, which really isnt very reliant and takes forever to launch, Cry of the Hunter is just an AoE mezz, not a stun, and an awful skill)
Loremaster (Ents go to war, 5 Targets, 6 Seconds (can be up to 8.5s), 5min CD, Storm-Lore, 5?Targets?, 3-5.5s, 2min CD, plus 2 AoE roots and an AoE Mezz)
Runekeeper (Fulgurite Runestone with quite some Delay. I think its 4s and unlimited Targets and no CD, plus AoE Mezz with vivid imaginary or something like that)

Classes that dont have AoE stuns:
Minstrel (afair, only Concussive Shout as a spammable 5s Single Target Stun (stuns only on crit with a skill with ~60% critchance which gets its CD resetted by every critical ballad))
Warden (I'm just aware of a slowly inducted ST stun that cant even be used infight)

TL;DR: even without Charge-Stun, Guards will remain one of the classes with AoE stun abilities, but there are classes which dont have such.

[Macdui]

Will Guard never get a percentage crit trait others get?

For landscape soloing we have to compare ourselves with the champ. They have 5% crit trait and a bunch of legacies to increase skill damage/crit mag, debuffs to apply and AE stuns on 20 CD and emergency horn to use as well as more targets they can effect. Quite a lot to impose control and reduce incoming damage yet kill very quickly. How are we stacking up against this? Haven't gotten on to BR with either Champ or Guard as yet.

Mac

[Rognomli]

Yes. Guardian doesnt need mitigations as belt bonus. Anyway I dont think incoming healing is good idea either. Gives far too easily stats for a class that is already extremely strong on all stats related to tanking (maxed mits without slotting essences, maxed crit d without essences, extremely high bpe without essences...). It would basically mean need of slotting incheal essences is gone as well, or at top slotting one.

Since they are making tactical runes not affect shield use and warchant anymore then Shield Use rank can be replaced with a Threat Generation Up rating if that's not too complicated to implememt. The functional stats on a class legendary are unique for each claas and I feel incoming healing would essentially mirror the champion rune. There are better things to put in there to reflect the class and it's uses more.

[TiberiasKirk]

Since they are making tactical runes not affect shield use and warchant anymore then Shield Use rank can be replaced with a Threat Generation Up rating if that's not too complicated to implememt. The functional stats on a class legendary are unique for each claas and I feel incoming healing would essentially mirror the champion rune. There are better things to put in there to reflect the class and it's uses more.

What stinks about loosing tactically based damage skills for guard is that our outgoing healing (to ourselves) also is affected by tactical mastery. So now classes like minstrel can buff their damage and healing with tactical mastery but guards cant. Doesn't sound like class balance to me.

[Joedangod]

What stinks about loosing tactically based damage skills for guard is that our outgoing healing (to ourselves) also is affected by tactical mastery. So now classes like minstrel can buff their damage and healing with tactical mastery but guards cant. Doesn't sound like class balance to me.

Guards are almost entirely % based in regards to self heals, tactical mastery doesn't really do anything here.

[TiberiasKirk]

Guards are almost entirely % based in regards to self heals, tactical mastery doesn't really do anything here.

sounds like more data gathering for me to do. I see the numbers improved even for % based heals. Outgoing healing is a percentage so it doesn't follow that it wouldn't buff a % based heal, but without data its arguing in a void.
or even presenting numbers with no error bars.

[Oelle]

sounds like more data gathering for me to do. I see the numbers improved even for % based heals. Outgoing healing is a percentage so it doesn't follow that it wouldn't buff a % based heal, but without data its arguing in a void.
or even presenting numbers with no error bars.

has been extensively tested.
percentage based heals only increase with incoming healing, not with outgoing healing.
outgoing healing only increases heals which have specific healing values.
Plus, outgoing healing is generally so weak, that its not even worth it for healing classes.

The only thing, outgoing healing should buff for guardians is Catch a breath, the weakest heal of all guards heals (which might change soon). Maybe I miss something... but blue block response heal is percent (0.5% afaik), BotP is 2.5%, PotW is percentage, too (2.5 or 5%, forgot, but as it triggers quite often quite strong, but soon gone), Warriors Heart is percentage and usually an instant full heal.
All those can crit though, doubling their effect.

[Joedangod]

Specific Suggestions for Improving Red Guardian DPS

I've been trying to think of a way to actually offer this input in a reasonably formatted way and decided that a patch notes style list is probably the best method so I'll list my recommendations below. I will then attempt to detail my reasoning underneath the change list.

• Defender of the Free (Blue) changes:
  
  • Some blue line traits should be rearranged in the tree to address balance issues when buying traits outside specialization
    
    • Smashing Stab: Row 4 -> Row 2
    • Guardian's Pledge: Row 2 -> Row 4
• Fighter of Shadow (Yellow) changes:
  
  • Insult to injury should be removed and replaced by a 5 rank Vitality increase.
  • Bolster should be replaced by a 5 rank light damage increase.
  • Tenderize should be replaced by a 5 rank critical rating bonus.
• Keen Blade (Red) changes:
  
  • Brutal Charge should be replaced by a flat 5% critical chance increase.
  • Prey on the Weak should be replaced with a 50% critical magnitude increase.
  • Thrill of Battle should be replaced by a 5 rank might increase.
  • Raw Power should no longer increase the duration of the Thrust bleed, instead it should offer a 5-10-15-20-25% damage bonus to overwhelm if it hits a target suffering from the Thrust bleed.
  • Hammer Down should no longer count as a parry response skill.
  • Hammer Down should have its damage output increased by 100%.
  • Hammer Down CD should be shortened to ~20s.
  • Shorten attack duration on Brutal Assault and To the King.
  • Some red line traits should be rearranged in the tree to address balance issues when buying traits outside specialization
    
    • Thrust: Row 2 -> Row 3
    • Invigorating Parry: Row 3 -> Row 2
• Legendary Item Changes:
  
  • The LI legacy "Bleed Critical Damage" should be removed.
  • Rename the "Reactive Parry Damage" legacy to "Parry Response Skill Damage".
  • Catch a Breath Cooldown legacy should be removed.
• Universal Changes:
  
  • Base damage for all skills barring whirling retaliation and the bleeds should be increased by ~50%.
  • Catch a Breath should be set to heal 25% morale by default, retaining the 60s cooldown.
  • Replace shield use rating with tactical mitigation or incoming healing rating.

Blue Change Summary:

My reasoning here was mostly to block off access to yet another defensive cooldown to Red Guardians. Whilst the lack of shield in redline (bleed damage scales better with 2h) does reduce the value of pledge you can still get exceptionally high avoidance through using it with the legacy. Smashing stab was swapped since this trait doesn't really offer enough to get picked at its current position.


Yellow Change Summary:

The changes I'm proposing here are in no way enough to warrant ever taking a yellow Guardian as tank but I did try to replace some of the more lackluster traits with something that would benefit yellow guardian in general. For starters insult to injury was an odd choice for yellow line since the entire point of yellow line is that you can eventually make your debuffs on a target permanent, as such I saw fit to swap out this trait for something more passive that would universally benefit all Guardian traitlines. Bolster and Tenderize currently don't offer a great deal to yellow guardian; Guardians already have exceptionally good critical defence and cashing out the critical rating on sting usage was a bit annoying as this skill can be pretty central to a Guardians rotation thanks to it's short attack duration. Offering a light damage increase instead seemed a natural way to go as yellow is quite light damage focused. The critical rating is also valuable due to yellow Guardians focus on being an offensive kind of tank.

These proposed changes also benefit the red/blue guardians who cross-spec but don't offer them anything notably powerful.


Red Change Summary:

Whilst I'm not in favour of returning the knockdown due to how much it could be abused I still am not happy with the current form of brutal charge. As such I propose that it be replaced by a 5% critical chance buff to offer a reasonable boost to red guard DPS. The next bit I looked at was Prey on the Weak. In its current form it's essentially useless, by replacing it with a hefty critical magnitude boost we can beef up the red Guardian crit damage to be more in line with other DPS classes. This recommendation goes hand in hand with the later point suggesting that the bleed critical damage legacy be removed. This way bleed damage should remain roughly the same whilst the other damaging skills are increased.

Thrill of Battle is currently worthless, the heal is small and the cooldown is long. Swapping this out for a 5 rank might increase will help improve guard DPS and it's pretty in-line with what other classes receive. Raw power is an odd trait at the moment since the thrust bleed is already pretty long in duration, the duration increase only really benefits the skill in AoE but with all the other changes you've made so far it's clear you want to steer us away from using red guardian as an AoE DPS. As such I propose that this trait be replaced by something that can bolster Overwhelm. Currently overwhelm isn't really much competition for Thrust so increasing the damage output will help it become a harder choice regarding which to use.

Hammer down is a little odd at the moment since it counts as a parry response skill despite not requiring parry responses in order to be used. I think it also benefits from the "Reactive Parry Damage" legacy at the moment. Whilst I've advocated for almost all skills to receive a hefty base damage increase later in this list I'm adding an additional 100% increase to damage to hammer down itself. The 50% classwide buff should mostly counter the nerf from it no longer benefitting from the "Reactive Parry Damage" legacy and the 100% damage increase should allow this skill to operate as the "finisher" skill it seems that it was designed to be. A further cooldown reduction would allow it to become part of the rotation and overall makes the skill more valuable than trying to get the Yellow capstones.

Brutal Assault and To the King take a really long time to go off to the point where I find myself spamming stamp off cooldown just to cut that animation down whenever possible. An attack/animation duration reduction on these skills will go a long way to improving how well a DPS rotation flows.

As far as moving traits in red around I figured it would be prudent to push the thrust bleed further into the traitline to ensure that blue/yellow can't crosspec into red and receive 2/3 bleeds core to the Red Guardian rotation by getting to the second row of the tree. Invigorating parry should serve as a decent replacement here since power can potentially be a problem for red guardian (although admittedly it can usually be addressed by power pots).


LI Change Summary:

The changes here are quite simple. Removing the bleed critical damage legacy should stop them from getting a noticeable DPS increase from the proposed Prey on the Weak replacement. The "Reactive Parry Damage" legacy is a bit of a misnomer right now since it doesn't increase the damage dealt by the Reactive Parry trait but rather increases the damage done by parry response skills. The catch a breath legacy removal is being suggested as catch a breath is a very powerful heal with it and as such it shouldn't have the option of increasing further over the course of a few LI legacy tier increases.


Universal Change Summary:

Setting Catch a Breath heal to 25% should cover the loss of the legacy and leave it at an acceptable amount of healing. It's worth noting that Catch a Breath is a response skill and thus benefits from the warchant CD reduction for block and parry response skills. The base damage increase is an attempt to bolster the generally weak hitting guardian skills so that they are of more relevance to the rotation. Whirling Retaliation is excluded from this as it already benefits from multiple legacies, traits and set bonuses (Strong Bursts) so increasing it further would be unwarranted.

Shield use rating should probably be swapped out for either incoming healing rating on the belt or tactical mitigation. I can see why some people would prefer for tactical mitigation to take this spot but honestly I feel like Guards cover mitigations pretty easily already, incoming healing seems a little less potent but remains useful.

[Gildintar]

Specific Suggestions for Improving Red Guardian DPS

Sounds good, except for a few things.
The rating increases are not great, simply because they have been badly scaled so far.

Dosen´t change the position of Guardian's Pledge, you need an emergency skill in yellow line.
Redirect isn´t one for me because more skills are needed.

Maybe your boost to base damage balances the loss of tactical damage on shield skills.
But I didn´t have time to test how the dmg / threat changed to blue.

In general, you might want to consider whether to set the values of Weapon Dmg / Tactical Dmg and Healing equal. To get around future balancing problems

[Joedangod]

Sounds good, except for a few things.
The rating increases are not great, simply because they have been badly scaled so far.

Honestly the new stat trait amounts are great. It follows that they should be able to do a similar thing for critical rating and the like.

Dosen´t change the position of Guardian's Pledge, you need an emergency skill in yellow line.
Redirect isn´t one for me because more skills are needed.

Yellow is going to want to dip deep into blue anyway for the tact mit and Bellow, they won't notice the movement much.

[Madmanthief]

Keen Blade (Red) changes:

• Brutal Charge should be replaced by a flat 5% critical chance increase.
• Prey on the Weak should be replaced with a 50% critical magnitude increase.
• Thrill of Battle should be replaced by a 5 rank might increase.
• Raw Power should no longer increase the duration of the Thrust bleed, instead it should offer a 5-10-15-20-25% damage bonus to overwhelm if it hits a target suffering from the Thrust bleed.
• Hammer Down should no longer count as a parry response skill.
• Hammer Down should have its damage output increased by 100%.
• Shorten attack duration on Brutal Assault and To the King.
• Some red line traits should be rearranged in the tree to address balance issues when buying traits outside specialization
  
  • Thrust: Row 2 -> Row 3
  • Invigorating Parry: Row 3 -> Row 2

I can agree with this, one question though, how long of a cd would you suggest if Hammer Down was given the damage you suggest ?

The problem with ToB is that Edgecase put a 20 sec cd on it. So no it doesn't function the way it used to, take that down to 5-8 sec cd and maybe it may work well enough while not being op.

[TiberiasKirk]

has been extensively tested.
percentage based heals only increase with incoming healing, not with outgoing healing.
outgoing healing only increases heals which have specific healing values.
Plus, outgoing healing is generally so weak, that its not even worth it for healing classes.

The only thing, outgoing healing should buff for guardians is Catch a breath, the weakest heal of all guards heals (which might change soon). Maybe I miss something... but blue block response heal is percent (0.5% afaik), BotP is 2.5%, PotW is percentage, too (2.5 or 5%, forgot, but as it triggers quite often quite strong, but soon gone), Warriors Heart is percentage and usually an instant full heal.
All those can crit though, doubling their effect.

You are right. I can only see an improvement in catch breath with outgoing healing and it sadly doesn't improve the power restore either.

I assumed it did, but not rightly so.
Still getting a small healing increase for free along with a large damage increase is something I do not want to lose.
Having our guardian's belt shield use legacy do something would be better than nothing. Incoming healing on the belt would be best if they insist on tying shield smash damage to physical mastery.

[Joedangod]

I can agree with this, one question though, how long of a cd would you suggest if Hammer Down was given the damage you suggest ?

I'd say leave as is. With 202k mastery I was hitting hammer down crits for ~40k on the tavern dummies. Doubling that to 80k is somewhat in line with how hard champions hit with remorseless but in this case the skill would retain the 60s cooldown. Overall it would work as a finisher, they just need to ensure that it doesn't still have the reset effect.

The problem with ToB is that Edgecase put a 20 sec cd on it. So no it doesn't function the way it used to, take that down to 5-8 sec cd and maybe it may work well enough while not being op.

At this point I'd say red Guardians already have more than enough healing for a DPS spec thanks to Warriors Heart and catch a breath. As such I'd prefer the might bonus be implemented to help round out the stats as it's actually quite difficult to stack mastery on a guard compared to classes like RK.